


Noonday, Dawn

by potatoesanddreams



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, On The Barricade, contemplation of imminent death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-18 23:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22701355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potatoesanddreams/pseuds/potatoesanddreams
Summary: When the time came to give the speech he had written, there was always something about it that might yet be improved, some turn of phrase that did not mean exactly what he wanted it to – so that even then the lovely chaos of writing was not over. He would hear his own voice ring from wall to wall, and remember the next point and think – no, it does not quite harmonize – and in the midst of all his listeners, his brow flushed with passion and his mouth still flying, he would hear exactly what it was that rang sour in that coming line, and even as he spoke it he would draw it into tune.It was like flying.(It had always been like flying.)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Noonday, Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for Dan.
> 
> This is based on the speech from the Brick that Enjolras gives at the barricade, just after the revolutionaries learn that their cause is lost.

Many of Enjolras’s speeches were prepared beforehand, long nights spent straining his eyes to read his own scribbled notes, overwriting the pages he had already written until the words sang for him, all in chorus – until they held within them a little of the glory he could see so heartbreakingly clearly – the light of Progress – the fire of the Ideal. When he had finished at last – and often that was only when the light of dawn was creeping across his work – he would throw himself down to sleep with abandon, leaving his papers scattered on his desk. And when the time came to give the speech he had written, there was always something about it that might yet be improved, some turn of phrase that did not mean exactly what he wanted it to – so that even then the lovely chaos of writing was not over. He would hear his own voice ring from wall to wall, and remember the next point and think – no, it does not quite harmonize – and in the midst of all his listeners, his brow flushed with passion and his mouth still flying, he would hear exactly what it was that rang sour in that coming line, and even as he spoke it he would draw it into tune.

It was like flying.

(It had always been like flying.)

But now he was rooted to the barricade like a climbing vine, and his words were flames in his mouth. Combeferre had helped him to write this speech, and he clung to that, to the knowledge that his friend’s meticulous compassion as well as his own zeal had gone into its composition. It had never mattered more – never, not in all the times that he had stirred a crowd to action or forged their fury into steady resolve – because this speech was not only a tool that he had fashioned. It was sacred.

It was their eulogy.

He had hoped never to have to speak it.

He did not – mourn, not exactly. All that were here had come freely, in service of the future, and in full knowledge of what they might be about to sacrifice for it. He would not wish them elsewhere, for that would be to wish their courage set at naught. But O – how he was sorry that the world was as it was, that guns and barricades and hopeless stands were required to set it right! How he was sorry that the souls gathered around him would miss the future for which they died.

It was not deeds such as this that made a life. It was thousands on thousands of ordinary moments – smiling mothers, old men with their grandchildren, the heart lifted at the sight of a golden dawn. Those moments – they were what his companions were giving away. Those moments would not be lost; they would belong to the people of the future, to all the children who lived to grow old because war and poverty were at an end. That – that was a worthy gift to make.

Even so, it was a costly one.

And he changed the end of the melody that he and his friend had written; because neither he nor Combeferre had realized, could have realized, the night before last – a lifetime ago – what this moment would mean. And he cried out his sorrow and his ecstasy, and he sang the dreadful contrast of the barricades, death and love; and he tried to tell them all, beneath his words, in subtle harmonies, how proud he was to count them as his friends.

There was more to say, when he had finished. But there would always be more to say, he knew – and yet he did not have forever. Yet for a little time, his lips went on moving silently; he was trying to taste the words the future would speak. Those words, those moments – no longer his. No longer theirs. Others must have them. Others must speak them. Others would live to see the noonday –

_for they were entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn._


End file.
